2013-JAN: The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) considers local option on gays

More reactions to the BSA's decision
by the Family Research
Council

2013-FEB-04: Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council sends email to their mailing list:

In a previous email, Perkins advocated that people phone the BSA with complaints over the policy change being considered concerning lesbian, gay and bisexual members. In this email, he takes pride in his accomplishment in shutting down the BSA headquarters' phones by advocating that people phone the BSA with complaints over the policy change being considered concerning lesbian, gay and bisexual members. Perhaps he didn't realize that by shutting down the switchboard, they may have prevented emergency calls from being received.

This time, they want to flood their Email inboxes with mail.

He wrote:

"As the BSA's board meets this week, join us in continuing to keep the pressure on by sending an email urging the organization not to cave-in to homosexual activists and corporations which have been threatening the organization's funding. 1

He mentioned that the:

"Family Research Council and 41 other allied organizations today released a half-page national advertisement in USA Today calling for the Scouts to stand strong. Join your voice with ours in sending a message that the organization should model the conviction it has espoused for over a century -- that timeless values really are timeless, and don't change because of threats from corporations and homosexual activists."

Human slavery, denying women the vote, prohibiting inter-racial marriage were also timeless values, until they were abandoned.
Few living today would like to return to these old timeless values.

2

The ad discusses the chronic problem of sexual predators infiltrating the BSA and sexually abusing boy scout members. It seems to misunderstand the nature of the problem. The abusers typically come from one of the following three groups:

Pedophiles, who are adults -- almost all males -- who are sexually attracted to prepubertal children,

Hebephiles -- adults who are sexually attracted to children in the early years of puberty, and

Many if not most of the adults with these feelings of attraction do not act out their attraction. It is abusive pedophiles, hebephiles and ephebophiles who threaten children and youths in the BSA.

Frequently pedophiles and hebephiles are not attracted to fellow adults and thus cannot be assigned a sexual orientation. Rather they are sexually attracted to young children and teens -- often to both boys and girls. 3

Unfortunately, the term "pedophile" in general usage is used to represent men who actually abuse children. Most pedophiles are sexually attracted to children but resist the temptation because they are aware of the harm that it does to children.

It is of paramount important to keep abusive pedophiles and abusive hebephiles out of the BSA. Unfortunately, their main efforts at exclusion are to keep out non-heterosexual teleiophiles -- adults with a lesbian, gay or bisexual orientation who are sexually attracted to other adults of the same gender. They pose little danger to boy scouts; they represent more or less the same threat level as heterosexual adults.

The ad lists 41 organizations that are allied with the FRC. They include some leading social and religious conservative groups like Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, Liberty Counsel, American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, International Communion of Evangelical Churches, etc. Most of the other groups function within a single state. The full list is shown in the ad as:

Perkins seems to be ignoring the many troops from within the BSA, the many religious and civil rights groups unrelated to homosexuality, and the two year 2012 presidential candidates -- Barack Obama (D) and Mitt Romney (R), all of whom are promoting an end to the discrimination against lesbian, gay and bisexual youth members and adult leaders within the BSA.

The ad states, in part, that for the BSA:

"... to compromise moral principles under political and financial pressure would teach boys cowardice, not courage."

It might also be said to teach individual boy scouts that when a person or organization has victimized a group through discrimination for decades, it takes real courage to admit the error, reverse the policy, and accept persons of all sexual orientations.